Friday, 25 September 2015

This week's prompt was also a picture. Rock concerts are rock n' roll. and so are Sam and Dean Winchester. So I decided to make this prompt the latest chapter of my little fanfic that I write. Enjoy. All you need to know is that Sam may have lied about some things and Dean is mad about it.

“You’re fired. Have you things packed and
out of here by noon”, Sam breezed into the office, throwing the information at
Missouri as he passed. She stood up and followed him into his office.

“You said get it done, I got it done. What are
you in such a tizzy about now?”

“You told Dean that our child was sick! Have
you no sense of boundaries. I want you out of here now or I’ll turn our
enforcer on you so help me”, he growled, looming over her like a volcano about
to erupt.

“Sam. I got the job done. You know he wouldn’t have come back for anything less”, she
soothed arms making calming gestures like there was a hope in hell that he
could calm the fuck down. AFTER WHAT SHE DID. there were limits. I mean sure he
lied to Dean; he did. Mostly to save him from some sort of worry or heartache; NOT TO GIVE HIM A FUCKING
HEART ATTACK!

“I need you to go Miz”, he bit out pointing
imperiously out the door.

“You can’t fire me”, she fired back.

“Why not?” Sam asked momentarily perturbed
before he remembered that he was the boss here. He was the rock star. People did whatever he fucking wanted. Not the
other way around.

“Because there is a clause in my contract
that says so”, Missouri said. Sam stared at her flummoxed.

“That’s not true. None of my employee
contracts have such a clause.”

“Mine does.”

Sam drew himself to his full height and
folded his arms, hazel eyes narrowed as he glared at her, “Let’s see it then”,
he said. There was a flash of light and then Missouri was holding a paper. On first
glance the paper seemed to be flaming slightly, with an eerie otherworldly glow
but then on second look it was just an ordinary parchment. Wait. Parchment? They
didn’t use parchment to write employee contracts.

“Sam Winchester, erstwhile boy King. The witches
didn’t exactly bring you to other-Earth out of the goodness of their undead
hearts. They needed you here so that you weren’t there to stop something from
happening. I am your very own guardian witch and you can’t get rid of me.” She said her voice slightly lower and hoarser
than Sam was used to.

“What did you do with the real Missouri Moseley
then?” he asked. It was the first thing that occurred to him. That Missouri
existed after all; and if he could find her…maybe she could help.

Red-headed Missouri inclined her head to
the side, “She’s a vegetable confined in a mental institution by her family for
her own good”, she told him, “Oh relax”, she said as she saw him flinch, “She
was there long before you came here. Some of the things she saw were a little
too much for her poor psychic mind to take. This wasn’t your fault. It was a
gap. Just like you and your brother filled a gap. Suck it up.”

She was nodding sympathetically, “I know. I
know. Who knew Dean would take his child’s fake illness that hard? But I’ll
make it up to you. I have tickets. To AC/DC.” She said proffering them as if
giving a two year old candy. Sam’s eyes cut to the tickets then back to her
face.

“I can buy my own concert tickets thank you”,
she said.

Her smile widened and she beamed at him, “Not
like these; these are exclusive back stage passes mate! And an invitation to
the after party where Bon Scott will be taking requests. You know he didn’t die
in this realm. Can you imagine how surreal it’ll be for your brother?”

Sam just stared at her.

“Give him the tickets. Don’t offer to go
with him, don’t make him take you. Just give them to him as a gift and then
back off and look like a lost puppy. I guarantee you; you’ll be humping like
the wolves you partly are before the end of the evening.”

Sam Winchester so wanted to believe her.
But he was experiencing for himself the seismic shift that happened when
someone you thought you knew has been lying to you about who they are for the
longest fucking time. He reached out though and grabbed the tickets. Then he
slammed the door in Missouri’s face. He grabbed
his phone and called Dean’s agency.

“Winchester Security, how may I direct your
call?” a female voice answered at once.

“Macy, I need to speak to my husband please”,
Sam said. As far as anyone in this realm knew, Sam and Dean shared the same
last name because they were married. It was a surprisingly easy sell. Dean had
been pretty perturbed by that shit but for Sam it was just another lie that was
maybe based in more truth than all the other lies they were telling. Okay, he was telling.

“Good morning Mr. Winchester, I’ll connect
you now.”

Macy had been to lunch at their house more
times than Sam could count. She had baby sat their kids on more than one
occasion. Still, when she was at work it was always, Mr. Winchester for either
of them. Sam listened to Dean’s office phone ring, wondering if he would agree
to even speak to him.

“Hello”, he said in Sam’s ear, intimate in
the way only a voice on the phone could be. And what a voice Dean had. It was
low and gravelly like honey pouring over grits. Sam loved it in a visceral way
that could not be enunciated with mere words. He could feel himself stirring
with arousal just listening to it. He didn’t think that he and Dean had ever
gone this long without seeing each other. Not in this realm anyway.

“Dean”, he said and what he was thinking
must have been reflected in his voice because Dean gasped. there was silence on
the line.

Monday, 21 September 2015

I went to my son’s school on Saturday for ‘open
day’. It was my very first one I’ve ever been to in a boarding school so I didn’t
know what to expect. What we got was a lecture about giving kids phones, PSPs
and too much money. Then we got to meet with the teachers to discuss
performance. Now maybe I’ve watched too many movies, or read some weird books
but in my head, discussing your child’s performance goes pretty different than
the actual reality. First of all, most of the subject teachers didn’t even know
my son’s name. I find that fucked up because even when my son was in public
primary school; the teachers knew his name. they knew who he was and they were
like forty students in a class. So when just two or three of his subject
teachers could tell me something personal about him…it disturbed me. The others
just reassured me that he caused no trouble in class. I mean yeah; I’ve met
him. I know he’s not a trouble maker. But what can you tell me about any talent
he’s displayed, level of intelligence, strengths, weaknesses? Nothing? All you
can tell me is that he’s a good boy? Wow, seriously not impressed.

And then well, we went to see the art
teacher in another block and my son showed me the work that Form Fours had
done. One of the pictures was a reproduced Banksy. So I point that out to Chris
and he shrugs and tells me, “Its not like anyone around here would know.”

“But why though?” , I wonder with despair. This
is a good school; they have access to the internet. Assumedly, the art teacher
keeps up with developments in the art world? No? apparently all she cares about
is hitting the benchmarks that indicate ‘pass’ or ‘fail’. I asked about
expression. Are the boys able to express themselves through their work? And she’s
like, not yet; we haven’t reached that point of the syllabus. We’re still
learning about lines and where colours come from and other bullshit that have
nothing to do with art. I was an art student in school. My very first
assignment was ‘paint a picture’. Now they’re learning about lines. They’re
being told that there is what is expected of them, and anything else indicates
failure. It seriously broke my heart. I’m pretty sure if I wrote Between Deathand Heaven as a literature project it would get an F for ‘failure to stay
within the lines’. God forbid you come up with something original; its all
about reproducing and regurgitating. So I told my son to listen to the teacher,
to do as he’s told; but at the same time to understand that what he was doing
wasn’t art/literature/learning. It was the production of a robot who will toe
the line. So if that’s not what he means to be he might have to find other ways
to colour outside the lines. I took his phone and found some art accounts for
him to follow on instagram. I urged him to use that ridiculously expensive 4G
device to do more than surf porn and play games. He would have to be in charge
of his own learning. He gets me. My son gets me, and he gets what I’m saying. I’m
grateful.

I feel sorry for the rest of y’all children
though.

You might wonder why this is such a big deal to me; maybe you don't get it? Its about how we see the world; how we are trained to see the world. whether we can hold more than one possibility in our minds at the same time. I wrote a story for the East African Friday Feature reimagining the Jesus and Mary Magdalene story and someone commented that Mary Magdalene was Jesus' girlfriend. And its because we can't really grasp the concept of a man and woman hanging out, interacting closely, without having sex with each other. We have not been socialised to imagine other possibilities. I see it now and then when people make assumptions about me and my son's father. No way we could just be co-parenting...something more must be going on for it all to 'make sense'. We like to keep our minds so small; yet the universe is so large.

Friday, 18 September 2015

This week's prompt is about this so I thought why not go back to the original story and reimagine it. Jesus? Mary Magdalene? Welcome to 2015.

Mary Magdalene woke up late, her head
throbbing with misery. Tequila was really the devil; newsflash. Somebody needed
to tweet that. Not her though. Someone else. She could hear her notifications
going off at the rate of a mile a minute and she knew what it was about. She
knew she was being trolled like nobody’s business. It was that nude pic that
Rick had posted of her. Her friends had warned her about him being a nasty piece
of work; but did she listen? Nooo, she went ahead and let him woo her into an
affair. Even though she knew he was married to that Paris chick. He said his wife didn’t understand him;
that she was cold to him in bed. He’d been so needy. How was Mary to know that
he was a stinkin liar. Well…okay, maybe there were signs. For one thing, his Facebook
page was full of pictures of him and his supposedly cold wife doing fun things
together. Rick had told her that it was all show. Just for the cameras. That as
soon as they got home, Paris barely spoke to him. Who was she to dispute that? Heaven
knew she’d never been married so she didn’t know that married people did or
didn’t behave like that. Besides he was so nice to her, so attentive. He picked
up every time she called; texted her like two hundred times a day. It was
intoxicating. Plus there was that Mazda he’d bought her for her birthday – to show
her how much he cared he’d said. Okay so it turned out to be leased and she’d
had to pay like a thousand dollars which
Rick had neglected to pay…he’d apologized so sincerely. Said he’d forgotten to
pay that cash and promised to pay her back. I mean he was so sweet! Who wouldn’t
be taken in?

When he’d asked if he could take her
picture naked, just so he had something to look at when he was lonely, how
could she say no. besides they were really classy. Only one really showed her
cunt; and it was a pretty cunt anyway; all womanscaped and such…she was proud
of it. In fact, Rick had also promised to get her some cash so she could have
it vagazzled. I mean, how cool would that be?

But then…last night, she’d gone to surprise
him at his club appearance in Miami and she’d caught him tongue wrestling some
other chick. Some tall blonde leggy slut with obviously plastic double d’s and
a body modeled on Barbie. Mary hadn’t been able to control herself. She was so
mad. She’d grabbed at Rick’s drink and thrown it in his face, badly stinging
his eye. Then she’d called him a cheating liar and left the club. Too bad that
TMZ had been on the scene and taken a video of the whole thing. Worse, Barbie
girl found Mary’s nude pics on Rick’s phone and posted them online. Ever since,
she’d been getting nasty messages from trolls and she didn’t know what to do.

kissmyattitude
wrote: whore. God will punish you for being a husband stealer

songsoffireandice
wrote: if u wa in GOT they’d have made u walk in the street naked already.
SHAME on you.

Mary scrolled miserably through her
notifications, looking for she knew not what. Would it stop soon or would she
be hounded off social media forever? She couldn’t leave! Social media was her
life; she might as well be dead without it. She tried tweeting some positive uplifting
messages to maybe shame the trolls into leaving her alone but they just
responded with even more gusto.

kissmyattitude
wrote: you have nerve to even get on here with u’re fake messages. We know who
yu r bitch.

Mary threw her phone across the room with an
anguished cry. It was the new iPhone 6 and the screen cracked as it hit the
linoleum. Mary screamed even louder. She wasn’t anywhere near finished paying
for that thing. And now it was broken.

“God!” she cried, tears streaming down her
cheeks in despair. There was a soft knocking at the door. Mary stopped crying
to listen.

“Mary? You in there? I heard screaming. Are
you alright?” a soft voice floated in from the other side of the door.

“Who are you?” she asked suspiciously. Had her
trolls found out where she lived.

“My name is Jesus. I live just down the
hall from you?” he said.

Mary hesitated for a moment but then
shrugged. If this was her day to die from some crazed ax man at her door well…it
was a good day. She was just about done. She opened the door to behold a Persian
guy of middling height, long brown hair tied in a pony tail low on his head and
beard flourishing on his face.

“Is everything alright Mary?” he asked.

She shrugged, “I guess you don’t do social media
much huh?” she said.

Jesus smiled, “Not really”, he said.

“Come in”, she said stepping back and
letting him into her apartment.

“thanks” he said as he stepped in. he
reached down, and picked up her phone, handing it to her. inexplicably, the
screen was repaired.

“Is there anything I can do for you Mary?”
he asked.

She smiled wryly, “Can you stop people
trolling me on twitter?” she asked.

Jesus smiled and kissed her forehead, “Is
that all?” he asked.

“Yeah”, she said.

“Consider it done”, he said and suddenly
the constantly beeping notifications stopped. Mary stared at him.

“Why…? How…?” she stammered in disbelief.

Jesus smiled, “Let him who is without sin,
cast the first stone”, he said, “Or tweet as the case may be.”

Mary bent her head, tears leaking in
gratitude. Jesus stroked her hair, “Go forth Mary Magdalene, and do not sin
again”, he said.

Wednesday, 16 September 2015

The sensation when you first hold a physical copy of a book that you wrote in your hands, cannot be described in words. It's like damn girl! You did it. You wrote the damned thing. Now all there is left to do is get people to read it. No pressure or anything but there is a button right there you can press to order it.

Friday, 11 September 2015

This week's prompt is a picture and it reminded me a bit of The Swamp so I'm writing a Outtake.

Roy was walking in the woods, studying the
tall redwood trees, looking for the perfect one. The one that would hold his
weight without cracking and turning his suicide attempt into an embarrassing
accident that would probably leave him with a broken leg or worse. Of course
the leg would take forever to heal and it would probably get infected and kill
him slowly and painfully. That was the
nature of HIV after all, wasn’t it? It turned the body’s attempts at healing
into a joke. The thought was almost enough to turn Roy Lestrange away from his
quest. But no, fuck that; he wasn’t waiting around for the grim reaper to take
him slowly and painfully. He didn’t want to hang around until his the skin
diseases had the whole town knowing exactly what was wrong with him; maybe
shouting ‘fag!’ as he passed. He wasn’t no fag. He didn’t even understand how
he’d gotten the disease. All doctors were liars. And that bloody scary witch his
mother had taken him to, who’d confirmed the diagnosis was a liar too.

Suddenly the sun came out, bathing the
glade where he was in magnificent light. It was heartbreakingly beautiful and
Roy wanted no part of it. How could such beauty exist amidst the ugliness
suffusing his soul right now? Why hadn’t this darkness killed him already? Or at
least overshadowed the light so that he didn’t have to remember that there was
more than disease and sickness in the world? He slumped to the forest floor,
leaning his head back against a vast redwood and looking up into the sky with
despair. He howled his grief and rage at the heavens; there was nobody to hear
him here after all…

Suddenly his vision began to blur,
dizziness overtook him and he clutched his head in confusion.

“What?” he asked nobody in particular, realizing
he’d shut his eyes when he opened them again to find a huge, naked, black man
peering down at him.

“O
hola si?” the man seemed to be inquiring…in a language Roy had never heard
before. The man seemed to shimmer in front of him and then turn his head to
look deeper into the wood.

“báareende liikeenda” the naked black man said peering into the
distance.

“I.don’t.know.what.you.are.saying”,
Roy said with angry emphasis.

“Get out of here. The
Ageless One approaches”, the man said in perfectly good English. Roy frowned
wondering why he had to spout all that foreign shit if he could speak the language
well enough.

“Who’s the Ageless One?”
he asked. He wasn’t moving just because some naked black man told him to. Suddenly
there was an inexplicable mist in the sunny glade and the man he’d been
speaking to was just…gone.

“What?” Roy asked no
one again looking frantically from side to side. Was the disease giving him
dementia already? He’d heard that was possible. Then he heard voices
approaching and scrunched himself low against the tree. For some reason, he
didn’t want these new guys to see him.

“…Even the slaves are
getting restless”, a deep baritone was saying as the shushing sound of feet on
leaves indicated that they were coming ever nearer. Roy scrunched lower down
against his tree.

“There is nothing to
be done but wait Armand. The slaves are restless because they know their
freedom might be nigh. Might. They’ve
been waiting a long time.” The second voice said. This voice had a lower
register than the first, like car wheels over gravel. It also shook with a
timbre that Roy had not heard before. If he was a guessing man, he’d say that
this one was the ‘Ageless One’ that the big black man had mentioned. Come to
think of it, the naked man had been covered with scarring over his scary tribal
tattoos. The kind of scarring produced by whipping if Roy remembered his history
books correctly. Were these the ‘slaves’ these two beings were discussing? Had he
somehow travelled back in time? It was all very disconcerting. Suddenly Roy found
that he just wanted to go home to his mama.

He made a small sound
which to his dying day he would deny was a whimper and then started when the
shuffling on the leaves stopped abruptly. They had stopped walking.

“Did you hear that?”
the baritone inquired.

“The whimpering? Yes I
did. Nothing to be concerned about. In fact Armand, there is nothing going on
right now that need concern you yet. Why don’t you go back to the hospital? Play
craps with Bernard and just wait? You will know immediately when they begin to
play your song.”

“Its easy for you to
say. You haven’t been waiting millennia
for this.” Baritone…or ‘Armand’ sounded a little sulky.

“Oh Armand, ever the
impatient one. I have this to tell you. Already the signs begin to manifest;
and whatever will happen, it will be soon. Your wait is almost over. There. Satisfied?”

Armand sighed, “I will
go now…because I realise I cannot get anymore from you. One more question
though, the Andrewes witches…?”

“Again, my eye is on
them and when something happens, you’ll be the first to know.”

“The animals gather
outside their shack every night and simply stare. Did you know that?” he asked.

“Armand, the swamp is
full of mysterious things. If we wondered at all of them there would be no time
to do anything else”, the ‘Ageless One’ sounded tired.

“In other words, you
already know why they do that”, he said.

“Go home Armand”, she
replied and this time, the tone of command was unmistakeable.

The one called Armand
was silent for a bit and then he said, “As you wish, your highness”.

There was a terrible
disturbance in the air and then after a time, the birds in the wood began to
chirp again. It was then that Roy realised they’d gone silent when the black
man appeared. Roy looked around him, searching for signs of danger but all he
saw were motes of light dancing on the leaves.

“I need to get out of
here”, he murmured to himself as he hastily got up and got moving.

Thursday, 10 September 2015

As a freelance writer of good repute I get a lot of invitations to bid on jobs (not to brag or nothin) and one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn is how to say...'No'. I mean, being a hustler is all about finding those jobs isn't it? It's about rising and grinding and using up all our 24 hours like Rihanna taught us, right?

Well sometimes, even when you know the job is all wrong for you or you just don't have the time to do it; its still hard to turn it down. It's mo money in the kitty and there is always need for mo money right?

I'm learning to take a breath though; learning to leverage things. I'm no expert, don't be fooled. I have faults. I procrastinate waaayyy too much and I have so many 'side projects' including this- blogging. designing stuff; posts and covers and shit. marketing books. responding to emails. Sometimes I think I could really use an assistant. Except I'm a control freak and nobody ever does it the way I need it to be done except me. I got problems. But I'm trying to learn. I discovered pacemaker that helps me keep track of my writing. I say no to invitations which are too much for my plate. I make sure I write something every day even if its just two words (luckily its never just two words). I'm evolving.

Sometimes you just have to really choose your battles and stick with those choices. Its difficult as fuck sometimes but ultimately you're better for it. Speaking of which, allow me to kill two birds with one stone and blog and market simultaneously.

Preorder Child of Destiny. You know you want to. Read the excerpt and see if you don't.

Tuesday, 8 September 2015

Guess what! We have a new release date for this one. My birthday; 9th October. I'm excited, I'm nervous, I so want you to like it. Here's an excerpt.

When she walked out of the bathroom which was across the hall from her room, she copped a peek to see whether Leo had stirred. He was standing in the middle of the room, fully dressed to his black alligator skin boots. Leo’s family was in the alligator business – hunting them, raising them, and selling their various components; skin, meat or teeth-whatever anyone wanted. So when he wasn’t wowing the school courtside crowds with his basketball skills, he was at his uncle’s farm, learning the family business, or else canoodling with his girlfriend Charlotte in one of her various family properties and hosting exclusive parties for the ‘in’ crowd at her lake house. His life was pretty much set the way that he liked it; or so it seemed.
‘Do you have what you need now?’ he asked her, his voice slightly huskier than usual.

Friday, 4 September 2015

The ringing telephone woke her up with a
start. It was so loud and insistent; she was used to the soft tones of Westlife on her cell phone. Who kept these old fashioned clonkers around anymore
anyway? The phone wasn't even a touch phone, it was one of those old ones which
had to be at least thirty years old. The telephone was fitted with a Dial,
Automatic, 21FA. This had a number ring with black figures on an antique
silver background and a transparent finger-plate. The dial cord had
spade-tags at one end for connection to the dial terminals and ring-tags at the
other for connection to the telephone terminals.

Diana hadn't seen its type
since she'd been no more than a tween. But now here she was; in Back Water
Australia; on a sheep farm, unable to sleep for fear of some king cobra curling
itself around her confronted with the shrilly ringing contraption that used to
be a communication device back when the earth was cooling. She reached out
hesitantly and picked it up.

“’lo”, she said sleepily, her voice rough
and cracked with disuse. There was no one else to talk to for miles.

“Di! You’re still alive. That’s great. How’s
it going?” Andrew’s cheerful voice danced down the line, sharp and clear as if
he was in the room with her.

“Fuck you Andrew, and the wagon you rode in
on”, she replied, her voice lowering even further and hardening.

“Aww, don’t be like that Di darlin’. Hey,
it coulda been worse. You could be here right now, facing the lynch mob known
as your creditors.”

“Or I could be in the Bahamas, spending
those millions you promised me”, she bit out, poison in every syllable.

“You could I guess; except…”

“Except you're a goddamned motherfucking
liar is except!”, she shouted at him.

“Di, Di, Di…come on; I told you the risks
when you decided to invest your client’s money with me didn’t I? I was upfront
and honest about all of it. Not my fault you got greedy”, he said voice
dripping syrup and toxins in equal measure.

Diana sighed rolling her eyes even though
he couldn't see, “That’s what I get for sleeping with the enemy I guess. What do
you want?”

She heard Andrew sigh on the other end of
the line, “I just wanted to check up on you babe, see how you were; if you're
doing okay. How’s my brother treating you?”

“Like poison ivy. He dropped me here in the
middle of fucking nowhere and took off!”

“He’s a busy man Di, you have to cut him
some slack.”

“Sure thing babe. I'll do that. Just as
soon as I see him again. I’ll definitely cut him something.”

“Tsk tsk. Language my dear. You still want me
to get you out of this jam you got yourself into don’t you?”

“Jam
I got myself into!! You fucking bastard”, Diana’s voice was so high,
possibly only the bats could hear her.

“I'm hanging up now”, Andrew said and
matched his actions to his words. Di was practically foaming at the mouth she
was so mad. Upside though, she wasn't currently thinking about snakes or snake
bites.

“Did you get the location?” Andrew asked
the CID officer standing beside him.

“Yes. Good work, that was long enough”, the
cop replied with a curt nod. He turned to his fellow officer and said something
soto voce to him. Then he turned back to Andrew.

“Once we have her in custody, you're free
to go”, he said.

“Thank you sir. I was just an innocent
bystander. She’s the one who was the master mind. You’ll see once you bring her
in, she can tell you where all the money from the pyramid scheme went.”

The officer just nodded non committally and left him in the room to
marinate. Andrew could see them outside, discussing things in low tones. Probably
planning to get in touch with authorities in Australia to see if Diana Lucifera
could be brought in; and extradited to Kenya for prosecution. Andrew didn’t
know how strong the relationship was between Kenyan police and Australian
police was. It was the furthest point in the globe they could think to evacuate
Di when they found out that the police were closing in on her. Andrew had kept completely out of the
limelight; he couldn’t imagine how the police had got his name. But he was a
con artist first, ex-lover second. He wasn’t about to go down for something
when he could pin it on someone else. Di had no proof he was even involved in
the pyramid scheme, let alone the master mind. Good sex could do that to a
person; it made them sloppy and careless. Andrew had learned that lesson long
ago.

A cop came to return him to his cell. A little
greasing of palms had made sure that he was alone in there, and a cleaning lady
came by twice a day to keep it spotless. Also those pizza deliveries from pizza
inn were like clockwork. It was good to be flush with cash. Especially outchea
in these hard Kenyan streets.

Di lay back on her bed thinking hard. Why the
fuck would Andrew call her? And for seemingly no reason other than to raise her
blood pressure. There was more going on here than met the eye and Di’s spidey
senses were tingling. She didn’t like it one bit. The last time she’d ignored
her spidey senses, she’d ended up on the run with a target on her back. She sat
up fast, looking around the room for her bag. She had not unpacked it so it was
the job of seconds to swing it up on her back and exit the ramshackle she was
in. She had a hundred thousand dollars cash. Time to disappear where no-one knew where she was.

Wednesday, 2 September 2015

Hi.
So I'm back! Lots of emotion swirling about looking for an outlet. But I want to make it good. So do me a favour and click on the link below to give me some honest to God feedback. The gods of good stories will reward you.

So I just came back into the city today from performing burial rites for my dad. I didn't realise until yesterday that I had actually bastardised Bukusu traditional rites in my book Child of Destiny. I won't tell you where because that would be spoilery. I didn't even know I knew this stuff so its kind of bemusing.
At the airport in Eldoret, I met these three white American women who sat at the same table as me and my sisters. I asked them where they got their biscuits from as my son was apparently perpetually hungry and they told me. This led to some conversation between us and one of them said to me...
"You speak really good English."

Now normally that shit is patronising but having travelled to India with my dad a few years ago, I do understand that sometimes you can be speaking the same language as someone and not understand a thing they sayin. I remember my dad asking one of the tuk tuk guys in India to 'speak in English' when he actually already was.

So I get it. My accent is similar to your accent so you understand me better. Its more of a sigh of relief than a compliment really. Still, it made me think about how insecure we generally are as human beings because many would have taken it as an insult and been all affronted.
Why are we always so ready to take offense?

Anyway, so apparently in addition to needing you to give me feedback! I also need you to practise some tolerance and cultivate some chill. POST FEEDBACK! CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE THAT SAYS LAUNCH ME!
THANKS!!!